The Maynard
Spring 2018

0:00

 

 

The Deer Who Sneak into Father’s Butchering
Shack at Night

I see the herd slink sneaky-swift into father’s deer-butchering shack,
Leaving greasy hoof scuffs on the gut bucket,
Nosing the crinkled polyurethane tarp that hides pelvises and collarbones
Father has yet to grind,
Whispering and laughing in their secret deer language,
Sounding like the crush of scree beneath an ATV’s wheels,
Or the rasp of my mother’s shout when she went into the butchering
Shack for the second to last time.

When father gets the kill, he slashes quick and hard down to bone,
Leaving a pile of knife-gouged entrails and cartilage to
Slick and bloody the shack floor.
A doe’s breastbone worn thin and messy,
Like the treads of father’s boots, so threadbare
They leave red welts where he has duct-taped the heel.

The deer are not bothered,
The bones are not the animal.
The bones are the remaining iron girders stuck stagnant in
Once soaring concrete pillars after the building has been demolished
With wrecking balls and belladonna and corrosion, an exploded and
Crumpled tire’s exterior wall in the gravel bank beside a highway,
The burnt crusts of a fast-consumed brioche,
Left to decay in the bronze pan.

My father has hunted for decades.
The deer have visited the shack for even longer,
For it was standing before father learned to cock a gun,
Before mother knew how to turn vibrant flesh into sacrament and latria,
And long after our blade-chiselled ribcages arrive on the shack’s floor,
Mould-red and rot-green,
The deer will still be purring gleeful rumours,
And the sticky old bear traps will toll empty from the ceiling,
Denouement windchimes and the watchers of trespassers.